A 55-year old retired teacher has admitted to feeling awkward after she bought who she thought was a down-and-out stranger a fish supper when she saw him covered in dirt and licking salt from a napkin. It was only after a waitress brought him over his own order of a battered sausage meal that she realised she’d made an error of judgement.

Kitty O’Neill, who taught Sums at the local comprehensive school before taking a retirement package after firing a lump of chalk at a coughing child, subsequently left the cafe without her order such was her embarrassment. She explained:

“I just saw this man opening salt packets and pouring them onto a napkin and swallowing the stuff. He was covered in oil and dirt and I had all these visions of a man on his own walking the roads looking for someone to rest for the night. I thought he was a wandering tramp so I took pity on him and bought him a fish supper. Turns out he’s a local car mechanic who loves salt and was just waiting on his own meal. To make it worse I know him and he’s a miserly oul bollocks with money to burn.”

The mechanic, known locally as oily Olly, proceeded to eat both meals and washed them down with three tins of Lilt, without questioning the reason for the unusual gift. Mrs O’Neill added:

“I even set the meal down in front of him and said ‘God bless you’. He just nodded and said ‘right you are’ and started scoffing the supper. He didn’t even look surprised. When I saw his own order arriving I did a runner.”

Mrs O’Neill confirmed later that she went back that night and got herself a chicken burger.

“since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places, after death. Perhaps - perhaps.”